When work stress overshadows all other facets of life.

Here are the ways in which work stress contributes to work overwhelm.

For some people, work is almost indistinguishable from a hobby or passion with creative capacity. For others, it is merely a means by which to get what they need to live.

But there is a third possibility that combines elements of both ways of experiencing work and gives rise to many problems.

This is the obsession with work linked to work stressIn this case, the person desperately seeks to reach the professional objectives, and on the other hand these "invade" the person's mind during the whole day, also in his private life.

• Article related: "Burnout (Burnout Syndrome): how to detect it and to take measures".

The anxiety and the labor stress like psychological problems

The first thing to note is that neither anxiety in general nor the stress generated by work contexts in particular are in themselves a problem to be avoided. Both are natural emotional responses to challenging situations that require us to adapt to a series of constraints in order to achieve goals.

And this is the case in environments where we devote hours of the week to paid work: we have efficiency and profitability goals that we aspire to achieve in order to meet needs.. Practically no one can "make a living" by constantly staying in their comfort zone, we always have to apply effort and dedication to a series of tasks that allow us to maintain or improve a certain pace of life, all while dealing with the uncertainty of what the future holds for us in terms of work.

Thanks to our capacity and predisposition to experience stress in complicated situations, we are better at reacting quickly to the moments when we must take action to generate value; it is part of the set of psychological elements that allow us to be motivated to progress in our careers or improve our economic situation, among other things. Without stress, we would not understand this interest in not being "left behind" in the face of changes in the labor market and business ecosystems.

However, there are situations in which stress ceases to be a help and becomes a problem, an obstacle that not only leads us to have a bad time, but also to have a hard time. not only leads us to have a bad time, but also wears down our quality of life and, of course, our work performance in the medium and long term..

In addition, this kind of problem usually appears in the form of a paradox; we feel very stressed because there is something that we believe is beyond us, and that leads us to obsess about it in a dysfunctional way, which makes us less prepared to face it.

In addition, people with high work stress do not manage to mentally disconnect from their professional facet when their workday is over, which generates a high psychological wear and tear.

Elements of work stress that make work invade our lives.

These are the main sources of work stress and that predispose people to become obsessed with their work.

1. Mental workload

Mental workload is the set of psychophysical demands associated with a task. When we spend too much time concentrating on complicated tasks, the most likely outcome is that we have no "strength" left to perform any other psychologically complex task: reading a book, talking to our family, etc.reading a book, talking to the family, etc.

2. Poor management of leisure or rest time in the workplace.

Many people with labor stress feel so worried that almost without realizing it, they become mentalized with the idea of spending a good part of their free time at the workplace, so as not to stray too far from the place of work.They do not want to stray too far from the place "where they need to be".

On other occasions, stress causes the person to be too distracted at times when he/she should be working (as a strategy to avoid anxiogenic situations, such as eating without hunger), and this causes the free time to be mixed with the working day, so that the work accumulates.

3. Psychological rumination

Psychological rumination is the cyclical, automatic and unwanted occurrence of intrusive thoughts in a person's mind.. It is one of the consequences of anxiety and stress, and usually the thoughts on which it is based are unpleasant or disturbing, and have to do with what worries the person.

Due to the predisposition to attract to consciousness stressful or distressing images, people with job stress are constantly reliving unpleasant memories associated with their job, catastrophic prognoses about their future work, and so on.

4. Sleep schedule mismatches

As a consequence of the above, it is habitual that the labor stress makes difficult to conciliate the dream to the suitable hour..

On the one hand, there is disorganization in the performance of tasks, and on the other hand, intrusive thoughts make it difficult to relax in bed.

5. FOMO (Fear of Missing Out)

On the other hand, the widespread use of smartphones and tablets with Internet connection causes some workers to develop a fear of missing out on important information shared on the Internet. fear of missing out on important information shared by colleagues or superiors outside working hours.This leads them to constantly check group chats, e-mail, etc.

What to do.

The key to prevent your work aspect from totally overshadowing all other aspects of your life is to combine a series of learning processes related to the management of emotions, on the one hand, and adopt new patterns of behavior, on the other hand. in terms of how you relate to your workspace and to those in it.

Moreover, in some respects it is worth taking a broader, more strategic view of the problem and, by taking a step back, questioning whether the job is right for us in the first place.

Thus, any attempt to reduce the causes of job stress and work obsession to purely emotional or material variables is likely to be simplistic and will not yield positive results in the long term. It is necessary to intervene in internal psychological processes as well as in externalizable actions and the management of work spaces (and even the spaces in which our private lives take place).

Achieving this is not easy, because it is necessary to maintain a balance between both aspects of the problem, but it is not impossible, and with professional help, it is much easier.

Looking for professional psychological assistance?

If you are interested in psychology services applied to the world of work and organizations, contact me.

I am a psychologist specialized in the cognitive-behavioral intervention model and I help individuals, couples and companies. You can count on my services either in person in Madrid or online by video call.